All Chapters of Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

Chapter 201MATTHEW"I'll be here," Callahan said, with complete seriousness.Theo followed me to his room.We sat on his bed in the same configuration we'd used for these conversations for months now. Him beside me, close enough that I could feel his warmth, facing the shelf of dinosaurs so he had something to look at that wasn't my face when he needed it."Your teacher called me today," I said.He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Mrs. Hendricks or Mrs. Patterson?""Mrs. Hendricks."He nodded slowly, the nod of someone identifying which thing this was about. "About Cal," he said."About Cal," I confirmed. "And also Marcus told me that Daniel asked you if Cal and I kissed."Theo didn't look embarrassed. He looked thoughtful. "Daniel was curious," he said. "I gave him honest answers.""I know," I said. "And honest answers are right. But sometimes we need to give people extra information alongside the honest answers so they understand what they're hearing." I paused. "What you told Daniel

Chapter 203FAKE BIANCAFAKE BIANCALouis was getting weaker faster than I'd planned for.I had reduced the dosage four days ago, which should have slowed the progression to a manageable rate. But his baseline was lower than Voss's briefing had indicated.I sat on the edge of his bed and kept my face in the right expression while I thought about this.He was lying down, which was new. For the first three days he had been sitting up when I brought the afternoon drink, arranged against his pillow with his dinosaurs, functional and present. Today he had been lying down when I came in, the night watch formation on the pillow beside him rather than in his hands, and he had taken the drink with less of the deliberateness he usually brought to things.He was pale in a way that was different from his usual pale.I had adjusted quickly, because adjusting quickly was what this kind of work required. I had set the empty cup aside and sat beside him and done what the memory transfer indicated she

Chapter 205RIVERAThe house felt different when she wasn't in it.I noticed this at seven-fifteen in the morning, standing in the kitchen with my coffee, listening to the particular quality of quiet that meant Louis was still upstairs and Bianca had already left for the market. The quiet had a texture that changed depending on who was in the house and where, and the texture this morning was the specific one of a space where someone was absent who had recently been very present.I had been noticing things like that for days.Small things. The way she held her coffee cup had changed slightly — still both hands, still the same careful grip, but the angle was different. The way she moved through the kitchen in the mornings was the same sequence of actions but in a slightly different order. The way she looked at Louis when she thought no one was watching her look at him.I had been telling myself these were the effects of stress. Of Silver Moon and the assembly and everything that had hap

Chapter 207THEOThe medicine was on the third shelf of the cabinet in the downstairs bathroom.I knew this because I had watched Dad take it out twice, and because the third shelf was the one I couldn't reach without the stepping stool, which meant it was where they put things that were for adults. Callahan's wolfsbane medication was in a brown bottle with a white cap and a label I couldn't read very well, and there were two other bottles next to it that were smaller and had different colors.I stood on the stepping stool and looked at them for a long time.The problem was that I didn't know which one was the important one. Cal had explained to me once, when I asked, that the wolfsbane from the knife had gotten into his blood and that the medicine helped push it back out, and that if he stopped taking it too early it could come back worse. He had explained this the same way he explained most things, which was directly and without making his voice smaller like some adults did when the

Chapter 209THEO"But I thought about it for three days.""Thinking about something and doing it are different," she said. "You know that.""But I wanted to do it.""What were you wanting," she said, "underneath the medicine cabinet part."I looked at the fish tank. There was a new fish since last week, orange with a white stripe. I didn't know what kind it was. "I wanted Cal to stay.""Why does Cal staying feel important?"I looked at the fish for a long time. It moved through the water with a specific efficiency, like it knew exactly where it was going even if I couldn't tell. "Because when he's there Dad argues more."Dr. Fisher made the small sound that meant she was interested in something I'd said. "Say more about that.""Not bad arguing," I said quickly. "Not like before. Just — there's more noise. Dad talks more. He gets that face when he's trying not to laugh." I picked at the edge of my sleeve. "Before Cal it was quieter. Even when Dad was there it was quiet. Like the quiet